The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope

by C. W. Grafton

  29 This phrase, meaning to cause trouble, has a long history. As early as 1840, a newspaper joked, “Why have we every reason to believe that Adam and Eve were both rowdies? Because…they both raised Cain!”

  30 The popular poem “Kashmiri Song” (1901) by Laurence Hope, the pseudonym of Adela Florence Nicolson, begins with the line “Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar.” The poem was set to music in 1902, and the popularity of the song did not wane until World War II.

  36

  A couple of cars careened up the drive and Tim McClure got out of one of them, handcuffed to an officer. City and County patrolmen piled out around the two of them, and he was hustled toward the front door. I ran lightly around by the drive to the back of the house, walked through the playroom, and listened at the door. There was no evidence of any movement outside, so I opened the door, found the stairway, walked up to the first floor. At the head of the steps I looked around and located what I thought was the door of the dining room. No guard was stationed there, and I had my hand on the knob before the man inside the front door saw me.

  He yelled, “Hey you!” and started after me, but I was in the room and had the door shut behind me in an instant. Tim was standing before the table, still handcuffed and surrounded. Two men were seated on the far side of the table. I walked quickly over, pushed through to Tim’s side and said, “Go right ahead. I’m his lawyer.”

  “Where did you come from?” shouted the sheriff, half rising and knocking over his chair.

  The door burst open behind me at this point and the policeman who had started after me in the hall jostled in and grabbed me by the collar. “Come here you!” he shouted energetically, “there don’t nobody come in here without permission, see?”

  The sheriff made a gesture with his hand, and the cop turned me loose. “I didn’t let him by,” he explained, panting. “He come up from the basement and busted in before I saw him even.”

  “OK, OK,” said the sheriff in evident disgust. “Get back to the front door. Never mind this,” pointing to me, “I’ll take care of him.”

  I pulled my coat straight, and when I adjusted the collar I found that the swelling on the back of my head was bleeding again. I put my handkerchief to it. “Thanks, Sheriff. I’m glad somebody around here realizes my client has some constitutional rights.”

  The sheriff growled, “Rights hell. You’ll stay around as long as you keep your mouth shut, and not a minute longer. Is that straight?”

  I said it was. Having constitutional rights outside was not nearly so nice as being inside, with them or without them. A chair was produced for Tim, and I was permitted to find one and sit beside him.

  “One question first,” I put in as inconspicuously as possible, “who’s got jurisdiction? The city or the county. I’m entitled to know who’s in charge around here.”

  The sheriff turned to the man seated beside him, and asked should I be thrown out now or later. It was evidently the chief of police. Instead of answering, he said to me: “You can have all you’re entitled to out in the street. One more crack out of you and I’ll stick you in the can on suspicion. This investigation is being conducted jointly. Go ahead, Sheriff. One more word out of him and we’ll throw him out without even taking a vote.”

  I didn’t say anything more and the questioning started. As I listened, I could tell that this was just a rehash of a previous session and they were hoping to get Tim in a lie somewhere. I didn’t learn anything new, and Tim told them over and over again pretty much what he had told me sometime earlier in the night. When it came to the point of the reason for his visit with William Jasper Harper and what was said between them, he wouldn’t talk. Then they would go back and start all over again with what time did he leave home and exactly where did he go and how long did it take and when did he leave and why did he park his car out on the road instead of in the drive, and why did he go out by the windows instead of the way he came in.

  Finally the chief said, “Hell, this ain’t getting us anywhere. Bring in Ruth McClure and we’ll check with her again on this time business. She hasn’t gone to bed with all this excitement going on. See if she’s at home.”

  “You leave Ruth out of this,” said Tim ominously.

  “You speak when you’re spoken to,” said the sheriff. “What say while we’re waiting we take him over into the study and go over that part of it again?”

  The chief thought that was a good enough idea and we all paraded across the hall and toward the back of the house a little and into a paneled room where a rich blue rug had a dark stain in the middle. I sat over by the French windows, which were still open, and a county patrolman stepped just outside the windows and stood there, blocking that exit. Then they took the cuffs off of Tim and he showed them two or three times where Mr. Harper was when he came in, and where they sat and stood and did. He stuck stubbornly to the story that William Jasper Harper followed him to the windows when he left and was standing there the last time Tim looked back. They came at him from every angle, but they couldn’t shake him or catch him in a contradiction anywhere.

  I guess this kind of thing went on pretty close to half an hour. Then an officer came in, looking a little flustered, and said, “Miss Ruth is gone. Can’t find her anywhere. Lights on at the house. Stuff scattered everywhere. Bed rumpled but not slept in. Thought she might be staying with friends, but I called around several places and can’t locate her. Car’s gone too.”

  This was something I wasn’t looking for. I was on my feet with my mouth open to say something when out of the corner of my eye I saw Tim, and stopped. He had a worried look on his face, and he was in a half-crouch and as tense as just before the kickoff. I didn’t have to be told what he had on his mind. He glanced quickly around the room and when he saw I was the only one watching him, he held my eyes for a second and he might have been begging for a dog biscuit. He must have found the answer he wanted, because after that he was out on the terrace with four running strides and the shoulder he put in the stomach of the policeman standing guard produced a grunt you could have heard for about four city blocks. Bronko Nagurski would have stood aside in admiration.31

  Someone yelled, “Hey! Look out! Get him!” and all hell broke loose. I ducked through the French windows as close behind him as I could, and managed to trip rather realistically over the policeman, who was groaning and holding his belly. Two men right on my heels fell over me hard and swore fluently. I couldn’t do anything more, so I rolled over and looked to see how Tim was doing.

  I would say the bushes were maybe four and a half or five feet high, and they were thick. As I looked up I saw Tim going over them with all of his two hundred forty-five pounds and six feet five inches, in as neat and light-footed a Western Roll32 as I ever hope to see. I was afraid he would break an ankle on the asphalt of the drive, but I heard him land almost as easily as a cat, and then there were some more short, driving strides and I thought I saw a shadow loom briefly over the bushes on the far side. A gun went off about eight inches from my head, and the sound deafened me for a moment so I couldn’t hear what direction Tim had taken after that. The police were crashing through the bushes and feet were pounding all around, and the sheriff was shouting orders, and from Mrs. Harper’s room someone was asking in a shrill voice what was happening, and if someone didn’t tell her she would scream.

  I did not want to enter into any discussions with constituted authority at that moment. In the confusion, I flattened myself in the gloom, against the wall. Then I walked casually back to the balustrade, took a look to see whether I was noticed, swung over, hung a moment, and dropped to the darkness of the back lawn. I did not want to walk across the brilliantly lighted area outside of the playroom, but there was no choice, so I stepped out of the shadows and did it as casually as I could. I went around the corner by the kitchen door, still without raising any hue and cry, and broke into a dogtrot through the trees and shrubbery toward the road, av
oiding the front drive and picking my way as best I could. Once on the road, I dropped back to a walk and legged it toward town.

  31 Nagurski (1908–1990) was a star football player for the NFL’s Chicago Bears, active between 1930 and 1943; he was also a professional wrestler with multiple championship titles.

  32 A high-jumping technique in which the leg farthest from the bar goes over first, followed by the body. The style first became popular in 1912, when George Horine set the world’s record at 6 feet, 7 inches.

  37

  When I got to thinking about it, the road leading straight into town did not seem to be the very best place to walk, so the first chance I had, I turned off and found me a rather gloomy side street and even then I stayed under the trees wherever possible and didn’t walk fast enough to attract attention. I had been on this side street about a block and a half when the headlights of a car found me. The car drew up alongside and a voice said:

  “Want a ride?”

  I couldn’t see who it was. If it was a policeman I knew I was going to ride whether I wanted to or not, and if it was not a policeman I could certainly save some time. I opened the door and climbed in by the driver and then I saw it was Tim McClure and I was not sure whether I wanted to ride after all.

  I said: “Where did you get the car?”

  “Just a little thing I picked up along the road,” he said and then looked at me and almost grinned. “I took a loop around in the dark and sure enough they had all stampeded after me and here was a car with keys in it and everything.”

  I was perspiring freely and I reached into my hip pocket for a handkerchief. In doing so my foot moved on the floor and I felt something gooey. As I bent down and stuck my hand in it to see what it was, I felt his pants leg and it was gooey too. I said:

  “Looks like they winged you. Is it bad?”

  “What do you mean, winged me? Those dopes couldn’t have hit me standing still in broad daylight.”

  “Then what’s this gooey stuff you have all over you? I suppose you had eggs for breakfast and spilled some of it.”

  “Huh,” he said and pulled over and stopped at the curb. I held my hand under the dash light and I am a son of a bitch if it didn’t look like egg yolk after all.

  I held my hand where he could see it and said:

  “Do you see what I see, or have I got astigmatism?”

  He stared at it with a frown on his face and then put his own hand down and came up with the same stuff all over it. I wiped my hand off on my handkerchief and then held the handkerchief out to him and he did the same. He started the car up and we drove another block without saying a word. Finally he said:

  “I think that must have been it. You saw me jumping those hedges and when I went over the second one my foot lit square in a basket and I fell all over myself. It’s lucky I didn’t break my leg. The damn thing got tangled around my foot and I thought I had a bear trap for a minute, and believe me I was in a hurry.”

  “I had an idea you weren’t stopping to mail any letters,” I observed.

  He shut off the lights, pulled the car over to the curb and got out. I said:

  “Where are we?”

  “In the block right behind our house. They don’t think very fast and even at the rate I was driving, we ought to be here with a few minutes to spare. I don’t care what they do to me but I couldn’t have those stupes locking me up when something has happened to Ruth. Come on, we can cut through here and get into the back yard and the kitchen. Make it quiet.”

  I followed him through an unpaved alley and when we were in his backyard we stopped and crouched by the garage and took a look around. While we were there he said, keeping his voice low: “Maybe I had the wrong idea about you. I heard them falling all over something behind me. Did you get hurt?”

  I shook my head. We walked up through the back yard and on into the house. Every light in the place was on but there was no one around. Clothes were scattered everywhere, drawers were pulled out on the floor and even the mattresses had been pulled off the beds.

  “Looking for something,” said Tim. “I wonder what.”

  I thought I might have a fair idea. I went into Tim’s room and found on the top of the dresser the litter of stuff I had taken out of my pockets the first night when I had changed into Tim’s clothes. I remembered that before breakfast that morning I had put the key in the pile, thinking that I would pick up all my stuff in due course of time. In the excitement of what had happened, I had forgotten all about it.

  I pawed through all the stuff that was there. Wound around in the watch chain I found the key and held it up.

  “Maybe I’m wrong,” I said, “but I think someone is very anxious to get hold of this key. Like the purloined letter, he or she or whoever it is looked every place but the most obvious ones.”

  All of a sudden something hit me with a jolt. Not a lick on the head—just a thought. I said:

  “Tim!”

  He looked at me.

  “Eggs,” I said, “what do eggs in a basket mean to you around in this town?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing, unless Miss Katie.”

  I looked at him and he looked at me. We forgot all about the cops being on our trail and when I ran out and down the steps and across the street he was pounding along right behind.

  38

  At the foot of Miss Katie’s front steps, Tim grabbed me by the arm and pulled up short.

  “Listen,” he said, “I’m not getting sidetracked until I find out something about Ruth. I may have five minutes and I may have fifteen, but it certainly isn’t going to be long before the town is buzzing around my ears and if I’m going to do anything, I’ll have to start doing it fast. You find Miss Katie. I’m going back. Where do you suppose Ruth could have gone?”

  I said: “Why don’t you try to find out if there was a telephone call to the house in the last hour or so. The police have probably been using the telephone a good deal but outside of them I wouldn’t think there would be many calls at this hour of the night and there’s an off-chance the operator might remember. Maybe the neighbors would know. Looks to me as if someone might have called her away on a wild-goose chase so that the house could be searched. You’ll notice that every shade in the house has been drawn so the lights could be used and somebody was in an awful hurry. Whoever it was must have known you were sewed up tight so why would anyone be in a hurry unless Ruth were expected back any minute.”

  “Maybe you’re right but unless the telephone operator happens to remember, I’m out of luck. Everybody in town probably knows I’ve been arrested and if I start asking questions in the neighborhood, I’ll be right back in jail in short order.”

  He left me and ran back toward the house. I clumped up to the front door of Miss Katie’s place so I wouldn’t be mistaken for a burglar and I was about to ring the bell when I saw that there was a light on in the back of the house. The front door was a big glass affair with a lace curtain on the inside and by peering intently I could see at an angle through the door of the room where the light was and it was obviously the kitchen. There was a shadow moving back and forth and at first I thought it was Miss Katie but then I realized that it was just the shadow of the kitchen furniture and that the light was moving. I didn’t know why a light should want to move but in a moment I realized that it must be a bulb hung on a cord from the ceiling and it was swinging. That was fine. It meant that Miss Katie was at home and not in bed so I could probably get to talk to her without arousing the neighborhood or getting shot with that big cannon she liked to carry around.

  I put my thumb on the bell and gave it a short buzz, and waited. The light went on swinging, slowing down a little, but Miss Katie did not come to the door. I gave it another buzz and still no Miss Katie. I knew she was not deaf and I could hear that the bell was working and I was not in a mood to stand around while she played hide and seek with me so I
walked around to the back of the house and up on the back porch and looked in. The kitchen was empty and the light bulb was still swinging. The door was open a crack and I pushed it and it swung wide. I knocked on the door frame and said: “Miss Katie! Can I come in?”

  There was no answer and all of a sudden that house seemed as quiet as if it were crouching there waiting for something. I raised my voice and called again and the quiet was so loud you could hear it. The swinging light was beginning to get on my nerves and so I went over and put up my hand and stopped it. The thing was plenty hot and there was no doubt that it had been on for some little time. I walked on into the living room and found a light switch and pushed it. There was nothing to see except just a living room with nobody in it. Beside the living room at the front of the house was a room with glass doors and I walked over and looked in. It was the dining room. Empty. That left the bedroom which I knew had to be behind the dining room because there was no other place for it to be. I went back into the living room and found the door to a little square back hall surrounded by four doors. I was standing in one of them and the door to the kitchen was at my left. The door straight ahead was open and with the light from behind me I could see it was the bathroom. The door to my right was open and the room was dark. I peered into it and there was a shoe out in the middle of the floor, only there was something very funny about the shoe because although it was near the foot of the bed, it was standing up on the back of the heel and I was looking at the sole and the thing was not propped against the bed either.